One day I decided to promote the idea of giving homosexuals basic human rights in Islam and Sharia run countries.

What was the response to this by our beloved progressive moderate Muslims of facebook?

Ahmad Aloran (Jordan) wrote

“hey
u r all sick people
disgusting ,gays are shit
they r garbage
i think every gay should search 4 thier parents first be4 they start talking about their rights.
so
with my best wishes
gays all
u r going straight to hell”

Kemo Staytieh (Jordan) wrote

“you mother fuckers mohammad ( salla alla 3aleh w salam ) ddnt support dat and its forbidden and the other thin that you are all know that islam is the right religon thats why u try to detroy its image cuz u know its butter than wht u belive or wht u try to cinvince ur self that u belive …. Bhavya Ketan dnt try to talk about cuz we know whts islam then we could blow u up mother fucker im muslim and arabic and im proud of that …….. god bless all muslims “

“u know that very well i wish that i could come then i’ll teach u wht muslims do and for u ian u could go and fuck ur self cuz thats wht fags do”

After these comments someone decided it was time to bring up apparent miracles in the Qur’an which was totally irrelevant…

Rami Abu Sharaiha (Jordan) wrote

“may god burn u in hell .. thats all what u will have ..
after death ..”

So suggesting people not get brutally slaughtered for their own sex life means I belong in hell?

“ur saying that because u r such a jealous gay!
i feel sry for u PSYCHOPATH!
ur the most pathetic person iv ever knwn!
GO TO HELL!”

“and you knw about that gayness thing?
its forbidden in our religioun!
and there’s a big punishment for those gay ppl like u!
so plz just shut ur mouth and keep ur shit for urself”

Then there were random comments about the Bible being corrupted which has nothing to do with the issue at hand.

Al Adaileh Boss wrote

“yeh fuck every one talks about islam,
and who talk…. i think he wants man to sleep with him “

Saif Bitar (Al Asriyya Schools) wrote

“u fuckin gay peace of shit……ISLAM is the right religion nd u gotta fuckin respect it before i shove my leg up ur ass u gay peace of shit nd mohammad is the best person alive nd will stay the best person alive u fuckin count peace of crap see gay people were brought up from europe nd americans u fuckin asshole u guys r the gay people nd one dayy u will get ur ass beating nd i hopee it will bee mee….fuckin assholes…..nd like everyone says ISLAM is the right religion thats why u gay asses r gonna die one day”

And why was asking Muslims to consider other peoples way of life before brutually executing them or imprisoning them a pointless task?

“Whoever dislikes or hates my point of view, contact me and I’ll be more than happy to fuck up his life.” (Abedel Rhman Saadeh (Modern American School))

The religion of Islam revolves around what are known to be its five pillars. These pillars are: (1). Believing in the Oneness of Allah and that the Prophet Muhammad is (not was!) His Prophet; (2). Offering daily five prayers to Allah; (3) Fasting in the month of Ramadhan; (4). Giving Zakat [alms] to the indigent Muslims and (5) Performing Hajj in Mecca at least once in one’s lifetime, if one is physically able to undertake it.

There is another cardinal Islamic belief to which all Muslims must subscribe; it being: Allah has no form or a shape and that He has no children, as He does not have a wife, or a female companion[1] to bear them for Him. This belief is very logical, for it will be a sheer stupidity for a shapeless being to have a woman to be his wife or a girlfriend. But is Allah really a shapeless or formless Being, and also, if He is a man or a woman?

Allah says in the Quran that He sees everything that exists on earth and what people do.[2] So Allah has eyes. In the time of Muhammad, Allah stealthily sat with the enemies of His Prophet and heard their discussions and then dutifully reported them to him so that he could take actions against them.[3] Allah has feet;[4] that is why He made fun of the idols for not having the ability to go to their worshippers and listen to their prayer. He also has hands[5] and He breathes, too.[6] Like a human being, He also talks.[7]

Allah also eats and aspires for all the comforts we humans seek in our lives. That is why He asked for a share of the booty His Muslim soldiers collected in the time of Muhammad from the defeated enemies of Islam.[8] He has not said, however, how He used those male and female slaves whom He came to own through His Prophet, and how He is going to use them, if His soldiers were to win battles and wars against His unbelieving enemies in future.

The Quran proves beyond any doubt that Allah is like a human being, with all the limbs almost all of us – the humans – possess. He is not shapeless or formless and that He is a man; that is why He, like a man, said in the Quran that He has no wife or girlfriend to bear children for Him. The fact that Muhammad met Allah in the seventh heaven and had a conversation with Him confirms His existence in a form or shape and that He is no different than a normal human being with all the limbs and faculties we humans have to have to lead a normal life on earth.

But is Allah the only Lord of the Universe and if He is the only Creator and Sustainer of all the lives that live in heaven and on earth?

Allah answered these questions over 1400 years ago, saying:

There is no god but He: That is the witness of Allah, His angels, and those endued with knowledge standing firm on justice. There is no god but He, the Exalted in Power, the Wise. [Quran 3:18:]

Say: Truly am I a Warner: no god is there but the One Allah, Supreme and Irresistible,- [Quran 38:65]

The Lord of the heavens and the earth, and all between, – exalted in Might, able to enforce His Will, forgiving again and again. [Quran 38:66]

According to Allah, there is no god but Him and that He is Supreme, Irresistible, and Almighty and Wise – qualities that enable Him to enforce His Will with no difficulty whatsoever. These qualities, together with Him being omniscient, are what make the Muslims surrender themselves to Him in the hope that He would forgive their worldly sins on the Day of Judgment – though it is not likely to take place again after its occurrence a long time ago[9] – and grant them the Gardens of Eternity (Jannati AAadnin)[10] in which they hope to live forever.

After claiming that He was the lone Allah who ruled the Universe and who implemented His Will at will, Allah also said in the Quran [37:125]:

Yusuf Ali: Will ye call upon Baal and forsake the Best of Creators,-Pickthall: Will ye cry unto Baal and forsake the Best of creators,Shakir: What! do you call upon Ba’l and forsake the best of the creators,

Allah also said [Quran 23:72]:

Yusuf Ali: Or is it that thou askest them for some recompense? But the recompense of thy Lord is best: He is the Best of those who give sustenance.Pickthall: Or dost thou ask of them (O Muhammad) any tribute? But the bounty of thy Lord is better, for He is Best of all who make provision.Shakir: Or is it that you ask them a recompense? But the recompense of your Lord is best, and He is the best of those who provide sustenance.

A careful reading of verse 37:125 will reveals that by asking His audience [will ye forsake the Best of creators], Allah has admitted that there exist other gods or Allahs, including Baal, besides Him, but they are not as best as He is. Verse 23:72 reveals the same thing i.e. there are other gods or Allahs besides Him, but He is the best among them in providing sustenance to the creations He and other gods create.

Allah’s confession to the existence of lesser gods makes it amply clear that He is not the lone Allah who was responsible for the creation of the Universe and all the lives that live in it. He is also not the only provider of sustenance to all lives; other gods, too, provide it to the beings they created, but the measure of sustenance they provide to them is not as good as that of Allah.

This conclusion leads me to ask: Should not the poor Muslims worship, and pray more vigorously to, those gods or Allahs who are responsible for providing them with their sustenance, and strongly besiege them to increase their sustenance to the level of sustenance Allah provides only to those people He Himself created or creates with His own hands?

On the creation of man, Allah has said in the Quran [95:4]:

Yusuf Ali: [We have indeed created man in the best of moulds, ]Pickthall: [Surely We created man of the best stature.]Shakir: [Certainly We created man in the best make.]

Allah followed His above statement on the creation of man by saying [Quran 95:5]:

Yusuf Ali: [Then do We abase him (to be) the lowest of the low,-]Pickthall: [Then we reduced him to the lowest of the low,]Shakir: [Then We render him the lowest of the low.]

How does Allah change the [best make of man] into the lowest of the low?

Here is the answer to the question: Allah created Adam from black mud that gave forth sound.[11] Where Allah had collected this mud from is not mentioned in the Quran. From one of his ribs, Allah created his wife with the intention to let them live forever in the celestial Gardens. If they had not eaten the fruit of the forbidden tree, both of them would still be living in the Gardens, and the earth would never have seen a single human being on its bosom!

Once Adam and his wife were on earth, Allah began the creation of their [progeny from a quintessence of the nature of a fluid {i.e. semen} {that is} despised].[12] This led Abdullah Yusuf Ali to quip: [… man is, in spite of his high destiny, often the lowest of the low].[13]

Since Allah creates all humans with a despicable fluid, the question of them being the best among all of His creations does not arise. They are born with a lowly nature; they retain it with them until their death.

Their lowly nature manifested itself when Allah had to deal with them in the past. He reports one of their lowly natures in the following words [Quran 33:72]:

Yusuf Ali: We did indeed offer the Trust to the Heavens and the Earth and the Mountains; but they refused to undertake it, being afraid thereof: but man undertook it;- He was indeed unjust and foolish;-

Pickthall: Lo! We offered the trust unto the heavens and the earth and the hills, but they shrank from bearing it and were afraid of it. And man assumed it. Lo! he hath proved a tyrant and a fool.

Shakir: Surely We offered the trust to the heavens and the earth and the mountains, but they refused to be unfaithful to it and feared from it, and man has turned unfaithful to it; surely he is unjust, ignorant;

It is clear from the above statement of Allah that the Heavens, the Earth and the Mountains were very clever in refusing to accept His Trust {i.e. the Religion of Islam}, as they knew they would not be able to keep it, and this they made known to Him by speaking out their minds. But man accepted it, without realizing the consequence of his action, thereby proving to Allah that he was a tyrant and a fool!

But as Allah did not find anyone else to bear the burden of His Trust, He entrusted it to man, knowing well that he was a tyrant and a fool. This action on Allah’s part speaks a volume on His own foolish nature and His propensity to take advantage of the foolish men and women He created with a malicious intention.

That said, the questions that beg answers are: Is man the best among the creations of Allah and what Allah expected a tyrant and foolish man to do on earth? Is not a foolish man supposed to do foolish things in his life? Is not worshipping idols and lesser gods part of his foolishness? If it is, then why Allah fought and killed with His own hand the Pagans of the Arabian Peninsula who worshipped idols, believing them to be their protectors and sustainers?

[1] See verse 6:101 of the Quran. In it, Allah has said that He has no [sahibatun]; it denoting a female companion, and not a [consort] as translated by the translators of the Quran.

[2] See 2:144.

[3] The Quran; 4:108.

[4] The Quran; 7:195.

[5] The Quran; 38:75.

[6] The Quran; 15:29.

[7] The Quran is Allah’s literal word, which He relayed to Muhammad through the angel Gabriel.

[8] See the Quran; 8:41.

[9] Cf. The Quran; 66:10.

[10] The Quran; 38:50.

[11] The Quran; 15:26.

[12] The Quran; 32:8. Also see 75:37 for a similar statement from Allah.

The article, in the free magazine al-Salam which is distributed to restaurants and cafes around the German capital, is couched in pseudo-scientific language, and accompanied with graphic photos of skin diseases.

Titled “A flesh-eating bacteria and sexual abnormality,” the article claims that gay men are hit by deadly diseases and that Muslim “brothers” should not shake their hands as “one never knows what kind of bacteria and germs are found on them.”

According to received wisdom, an Islamic faith that once tolerantly coexisted with Jews and Christians has been traumatized by the twentieth century and its destructive ideologies (such as fascism, communism, and nationalism), by the depredations of European colonialism and imperialism, and by the displacements wrought by globalization. These developments, according to such apologists as John Esposito and Reza Aslan, have given rise to a distortion of Islam, one manifested not just in “Islamist” terror but also in the virulent anti-Semitism visible today throughout the Middle East and in Europe’s Muslim communities. A religious culture that once embraced the kindred “people of the book”—Jews and Christians—has now been infected by European anti-Semitism, just one more way that Western cultural dysfunctions have damaged the traditions of a proud faith.

The problem with this tale, as Andrew Bostom documents in The Legacy of Islamic Antisemitism, is that it isn’t true. A physician and professor of medicine at Brown University, Bostom demonstrated a doctor’s fidelity to empirical evidence in his previous book, The Legacy of Islamic Jihad, showing how violence against the infidel is central to Islamic doctrine, theology, and jurisprudence. He now performs a similar service in examining Islamic anti-Semitism, exploding the delusional myths with which too many in the West obscure the truth of Muslim Jew-hatred.

As he did in his earlier book, Bostom provides copious documentation from primary sources—including the Koran, hadith (traditional accounts of Mohammed’s deeds and sayings), sira (early biographies of Mohammed), and other Muslim texts—as well as modern scholarly commentary, including his own introduction, which summarizes his conclusions. His use of such an abundant body of scholarship makes it difficult for critics to dismiss his arguments as biased interpretations of the evidence. As he writes, “For the Muslim masses, basic Islamic education in the Qu’ran, hadith, and sira . . . may create an immutable superstructure of Jew hatred on to which non-Muslim sources of Jew hatred are easily grafted.”

Islamic anti-Semitism begins, as do all things in Islam, with the Koran—the immutable, infallible, timeless words of Allah dictated to the Prophet—in which Jews are cursed with “abasement and humiliation” and are “deserving of Allah’s wrath” because they rejected Mohammed. Jews are further characterized as corrupt, treacherous rebels and infidels whose destiny is to be the enemy of the true believers. The debased status of Jews is communicated most starkly in the Koranic verse (5:60) referring to their transformation into “apes” or “apes and swine,” a motif repeated in the early Muslim biographies of Mohammed: just before he executed the adult males of the Banu Qurayza, a Medinan Jewish tribe, Mohammed called them “brothers of apes” or, in another version, “brothers of monkeys and pigs.” This odious phrase recurs repeatedly in Muslim writings right up to the present: in a 2002 radio broadcast, Sudanese dictator Omar al-Bashir called for jihad against the Jews, “those apes, pigs, and worshipers of calves.” And Muhammad Sayyid Tantawi, grand imam of Al-Azhar University, the most prestigious center of Muslim learning and theology, likewise has called Jews the “descendants of apes and pigs.” As the Tantawi example shows, such characterizations of Jews are not limited to fringe writers or marginalized extremists, as they are with present-day Christian anti-Semitism.

Further, Jew-hatred has been voiced over the centuries by the most respected theologians, jurists, and Koranic commentators, such as al-Tabari, Baydawi, and ibn Kathir. In the sixteenth century, the Moroccan sheikh al-Maghili’s voluminous diatribes against the Jews of the Touat oasis—“Love of the Prophet requires hatred of the Jews,” he wrote—culminated in a massacre of Touat’s Jews and the destruction of their synagogue. Closer to our own times, this tradition can be found in the writings of Sayyid Qutb, the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood and prolific Koranic commentator, who was the most important theorist for modern jihadists. Qutb linked his call for a fundamentalist return to Islam to the Jews, whose “wicked nature . . . is full of hatred for Islam,” and whose defeat would come about only at the hands of Muslims who “implement Islam completely in their lives.” And modern terrorists have accompanied their murders of Israelis with similar justifications that refer to the Koran and Koranic exegetes, as in a 1968 Cairo conference that called repeatedly for forcing the Jews to return to their proper status of permanent abasement, humiliation, and wretchedness.

Like the Koran, the deeds and sayings of Mohammed collected in the hadith justify Muslim hatred of Jews. Mohammed repeatedly defines the proper behavior of Muslims by contrasting it with the customs and practices of the Jews. In the hadith, Jews are treacherous, envious, and spiteful. They alter the sacred scriptures to remove references to Mohammed; cast evil spells on Muslims; poison Mohammed; and reject spitefully Mohammed’s revelation and status as “seal of the prophets.” This alleged Jewish hostility toward Muslims justifies Muslims’ obligation to subdue and humiliate Jews. A seventeenth-century Yemenite ruler, Imam al-Mahdi, desired to fulfill Mohammed’s deathbed charge, as recorded in a canonical hadith, that “two religions shall not remain together in the peninsula of the Arabs,” so he exiled the Jews of Yemen to the desolate plain of Tihama, destroying synagogues and desecrating Torah scrolls. Only 1,000 of the original 10,000 Jews survived the ordeal.

In traditional biographies of Mohammed, the Jews appear as rivals to the new faith who must be conquered and displaced in order for Islam to advance. According to the eighth-century biographer ibn Ishaq, the Jews of Medina harassed Mohammed “out of jealousy, envy, and malice because Allah Exalted had conferred distinction upon the Arabs by choosing him as His messenger.” In point of historical fact, the Medina to which Mohammed repaired after leaving Mecca was home to three Jewish tribes whose rejection of Mohammed impeded his ambitions and whose ridicule of his exegesis of Jewish scripture aroused in him something akin to Harold Bloom’s “anxiety of influence”—a humiliating reminder of how much of the Koran was plagiarized from Jewish sacred writings. What followed was a campaign of assassinations of Jewish poets and leaders—ibn Ishaq quotes the Prophet as saying, “Kill any Jew that falls into your power”—and raids on Jewish caravans. This escalating aggression culminated in an attack on the Banu Qaynuqa tribe, whose members were despoiled and expelled from Medina. Next was the turn of the Banu Nadir, who were also expelled, their property distributed to Muslims. The last tribe, the Banu Qurayza, held out for a while behind their fortifications; when they finally surrendered, 600 to 900 men were beheaded, their women and children were sold into slavery, and their possessions were distributed, again, to Muslims. Subsequent Islamic exegetes (Abu Yusuf and al-Mawardi, for example) pointed to the extinction of the Banu Qurayza as a model for Muslim treatment of infidels who stand in the way of Islam’s ambitions by refusing the call to convert.

Bostom links this tradition to Muslims’ later treatment of Jews in Palestine, Spain, Turkey, and Iran. The doctrine of jihad is crucial to the story, for it links the goal of conquest to the protocols for treatment of Jews and Christians, who as dhimmi must live at the sufferance of their Muslim overlords, subjected to humiliating restrictions on their lives and payment of a poll tax. Contrary to the apologists and their fantasies of ecumenical tolerance in historic Islamic states, Bostom’s history is filled with massacres, enslavement, dispossession, and plundering of Jews, all justified by the Koran and Mohammed’s own behavior. This pattern extends to the present. Yasser Arafat, for example, appeared to the West in the guise of a secular nationalist, but his “core ideology,” Bostom writes, “remained . . . rooted in jihad.” Thus Arafat wrote to the Ayatollah Khomeini, “I pray Allah to guide your step along the paths of faith and Holy War in Iran, continuing the combat until we arrive at the walls of Jerusalem.” After the signing of the Oslo accords in 1993, which provided the Palestinians with a golden opportunity to realize their goal of an independent state—the presumed motive for their violence against Jews—Arafat said, “The jihad will continue.” And Hamas, of course, continues the long tradition of Jew-hatred and jihad today.

Bostom sees the same pattern of faith-sanctioned Jew-hatred and violence in Muslim Spain and Ottoman Turkey, both frequently extolled by apologists as oases of Islamic tolerance for Jews. Those who believe in the “golden age” of Andalusia should remember the slaughter of 3,000 to 4,000 Granadan Jews in 1066, a massacre preceded by the polemics of ibn Hazm, who repeated the traditional calumnies characterizing Jews as liars, tricksters, and the “filthiest and vilest of peoples, their unbelief horrid, their ignorance abominable.” So, too, the verses of Abu Ishaq, ibn Hazim’s contemporary, which sounded all the traditional notes of Islamic Jew-hatred, particularly the “humiliation and abasement” due to “apes.” Since this linkage of traditional rhetoric with violence continues in our own time, we must take such utterances seriously and not dismiss them as Muslim frustration with neocolonialism or Israel’s so-called occupation of Palestine.

Based solely on the historical evidence, Bostom’s survey and 500 pages of supporting documentation sweep away what he calls the “false pillars” of current apologies for Muslim anti-Semitism: that Muslim hostility to Jews is not grounded in Islamic theology, and that Jews living in historic Muslim societies were not subject to subservience and persecution. For Westerners doubtful of their own culture’s rectitude and unsure about what to believe, it might be pretty to think that Islam is just another Abrahamic path to God that shares the values of Christianity and Judaism. But the facts that Bostom collects tell another tale, one we should heed if we are to prevail against jihadist terror.

Armed men stopped a mini-bus and murdered four Christian male passengers execution-style in Mindanao yesterday, while a fifth passenger is still missing.

According to police, the murder took place in an area considered a bastion of rebels from the Moro Islamic Front, where criminal episodes of this nature have occurred in the past. Security officials failed to confirm is if the assassination was of a confessional nature or whether the Muslim militants were responsible. The bus was carrying about 15 people when it was stopped near Malabang, Lanao del Sur, an area under MILF control. The passengers were robbed but the women were allowed to leave unharmed; then four of the five men were dragged into a forest and shot in the head at close range, the fifth abducted.

The signing of a peace accord between the central government and MILF rebels, held responsible for the July 24th attack in Davao del Sur, appears increasingly fragile. Also Yesterday 30 suspected MILF rebels attacked a paramilitary outpost in Dualing, Midsayap, North Cotabato, killing a civilian and wounding four others.

MILF maintains its right to control some of the majority Muslim regions of Mindanao, the theatre of bloody episodes of violence: on the negotiating table the creation of a “federal” state – the Autonomous Region of Muslim Mindanao (ARMM), enlarged by the annexation of a further 72 Muslim majority villages – along with rights to exploit territorial resources. Villages will be able to decide by popular referendum whether to join the ARMM, but the deputy governor of North Nord Cotabato has underlined the uselessness of the vote because of “threats and vote rigging aimed at forcing the villagers to vote for annexation”.

The Philippine Catholic Church, through the bishop’s conference, has urged “the government and the MILF to return to the negotiating table after talks ended again in an impasse”. Archbishop Antonio Ledesma of Cagayan de Oro and CBCP Commission on Inter-religious Dialogue head has strenuously called for “an end to the violence” and “the re-starting of peace talks”. This is why the bishops are in favour of third party mediators between the two sides. The Malaysian government had been serving as facilitator a role that requires “care, diligence and time” in order to bear fruit.But many fear that time is of essence: if a deal is not reached soon, war could return to Mindanao

Washington — The Institute on Religion and Public Policy strongly condemns the new constitution ratified by the Maldives’ legislature yesterday. The constitution fails to provide basic guarantees of rights and freedoms in the country for non-Muslims and also violates internationally accepted human rights standards and norms.

Article 9, Section D states that “a non-Muslim may not become a citizen of the Maldives.” By denying citizenship to some people on the basis of their religion, the country is violating religious minorities’ freedom of worship.

“This denial of citizenship to non-Muslims is an extraordinarily harsh measure which places the Maldives among the worst countries in the world in regards to the legal foundation for freedom of religion and belief,” said Institute President Joseph K. Grieboski.

In addition to denying non-Muslims citizenship, the new constitution establishes several other precepts which threaten the freedom of religion. The new constitution favors Sunni Islam over other forms of Islam, establishes certain aspects of Sharia law in the Maldives and limits the freedom of expression and thought to “manners” which are “not contrary to a tenet of Islam.”

The Institute’s Expert Committee on Legislation and Implementation is currently crafting a comprehensive analysis of the new constitution for expected release in September.